Software - how to - make quick prototypes.

As I said I would do before, here are a couple of pointers that should hopefully help you if you developing prototypes for users unsure of what they want.

Prototyping model:

Basically, the prototyping model relies a lot on smoke and mirrors. Making it look like a finished product that barely works, but delivering the gist of what the program will do. Then scrap it, and do a quality version of the prototype, focusing on how the user will want to use the product.

Use asp.net for prototypes:

Because of this, I tend to use asp.net for prototyping. It provides lots of easy to implement asp.net controls, along with master pages and CSS, to make designing GUIs a snap. AJAX enabling it makes the website act just like a program on the hard drive too.

Before you start, design your GUI, then your master page

While the end users may not have any idea on what they want, you definitely know what they might want. You also definitely know how you want the application to look, and how the user would like the application to look. Plus, having something that looks nice makes the user think you are doing a good job.

With GUI's, a little planning goes a long way. Set you GUI with the same idea as Microsoft SharePoint Server. Have a Master Page, various layouts for entering, editing, etc, in your master page, and then individual set ups for your individual pages. This makes developing new functionality much quicker from the GUI side of things.

The DetailsView class is probably the easiest way to set up data entry and data editing. With a little bit of work, the buttons used to insert can be changed too, so it becomes easier for users to understand. Tomorrow I'll upload some code that changes the insert DetailsView into the relevant edit DetailsView when the user saves their data.

When you don't know what data is going to be needed, use the Table class.

The great thing about the Table class is you can easily set it up to look like a GridView class, but not worry about tying it to a Data Structure. You can also easily make the table look like input has been entered and show what it would look like when inserting data. I'll put up a picture of how this looks tomorrow.

As I said I would do before, here are a couple of pointers that should hopefully help you if you developing prototypes for users unsure of what they want.

Prototyping model:

Basically, the prototyping model relies a lot on smoke and mirrors. Making it look like a finished product that barely works, but delivering the gist of what the program will do. Then scrap it, and do a quality version of the prototype, focusing on how the user will want to use the product.

Use asp.net for prototypes:

Because of this, I tend to use asp.net for prototyping. It provides lots of easy to implement asp.net controls, along with master pages and CSS, to make designing GUIs a snap. AJAX enabling it makes the website act just like a program on the hard drive too.

Before you start, design your GUI, then your master page

While the end users may not have any idea on what they want, you definitely know what they might want. You also definitely know how you want the application to look, and how the user would like the application to look. Plus, having something that looks nice makes the user think you are doing a good job.

With GUI's, a little planning goes a long way. Set you GUI with the same idea as Microsoft SharePoint Server. Have a Master Page, various layouts for entering, editing, etc, in your master page, and then individual set ups for your individual pages. This makes developing new functionality much quicker from the GUI side of things.

The DetailsView class is probably the easiest way to set up data entry and data editing. With a little bit of work, the buttons used to insert can be changed too, so it becomes easier for users to understand. Tomorrow I'll upload some code that changes the insert DetailsView into the relevant edit DetailsView when the user saves their data.

When you don't know what data is going to be needed, use the Table class.

The great thing about the Table class is you can easily set it up to look like a GridView class, but not worry about tying it to a Data Structure. You can also easily make the table look like input has been entered and show what it would look like when inserting data. I'll put up a picture of how this looks tomorrow.